Hello all, I am raising 20 chicks right now that are about 3 weeks old and I am try to cover all my bases for when they get older. I have 2 acres and plan to have my birds free range during the day then lock them in there pen and coop at night. My neighbor has about 6 chickens that occasionally come in my property. My question is there a chance that my birds will follow the other chickens to there coop and eventually want to merge together? Thank you.
It could happen - or your neighbor's chickens may try to join your flock, or they may never try to merge. You never know. The best option would be to keep your neighbor's chickens off your property, and vice versa. Six chickens coming into your yard may not be a big deal, but your neighbor may not appreciate 20 chickens on their property. That's a lot of potential damage to yard, gardens and flower beds.
First of all, I do not think that your chickens will try and join the neighbors flock. They know where they get their food, water, and protection and will want to return every night. Same with your neighbors chickens. That being said, I do not think it is a good idea having his birds on your property. Birds that don't know each other may pick at each other, and if his birds are older and yours are younger/smaller, his may try and chase yours around beating them up, causing a lot of stress for them. There are certain "rules" for introducing new chickens, and having someone elses chickens just come into your property randomly doesn't follow those rules. Plus you may be feeding his birds for free. Its easier to keep the flocks separate unless you intend to keep them both together at your property only, and properly introduce them. Just fence in your birds, thus fencing his out.
Look into electric poultry netting. Without a perimeter fence or fence of any kind two acres may or may not contain your birds. The grass is always greener scenario is always in play and the simple fact that forage near coop is used up so birds move farther and farther away finding bugs and fresh sprouts. If there is a nice tree they like they will be line there every day and venture out from it finding forage then come home to coop at night. Without knowing your yard it's hard to say where the birds will go if given a choice. There may be a perfect low bush on the neighbors yard they choose to stay during the day. You don't know. With electric poultry netting your doing several things. Containing your birds and providing protection from predators. The beauty of this system is it only takes an hour to move it to a new forage area every few weeks so they have fresh pickings. Netting comes in varying lengths. I'll be honest in saying the 164' net is a bit of a pain to move about. I do it alone so takes a bit over an hour depending how many trees and bushes I plan to surround. But think on that, that's over 40x40 run that's portable. Even setting it up so it surrounds the coop mostly run to one side then moving so mostly run on other side for fresh forage and so on you cover four sides of your coop in rotation to allow new sprouts and deter losing the entire area to mud pit. All sorts of solutions. I have portable coop (on skids dragged by lawn tractor) so everything can move. Imagine you've a large coop but hey, a jack and rig up some wheels for it it will move easily too.
Thank you all for the great info. I am planning on building a 10x25 ft pen around their coop now for them to mainly be in. I think when we let them out we will supervise them. It's not the end of the world if they go on his property as he owes me for his goats constantly coming over as well. I like the idea of the electric fence and will look more into that.
A good source is Premier1. Prices are competitive and they offer kits. A netting "kit" includes 4 extra heavy duty corner posts. Those are handy and aid in keeping netting tight so it doesn't sag. Major sags will ground it out causes low voltage. Over time you need to tighten the net or you'll go way down to 2K volt or less. Offer a kit for charger which includes ground rod, and voltage tester. Those kits do save you money. Then there is a hotgate. It clips into your fence so you have a 4' electric gate.
I completely MISREAD your post, but I'll leave it anyway...someone might be able to use it. Here is what we did... We had two flocks. One flock was all older birds, last year's pullets, 2 year olds, 3 year olds or even Older Birds. As long as they laid eggs and were healthy they were part of the flock. Then we had the younger flock. These were all pullet birds. After/during the molt, in December-ish, we would merge the two flocks and then select for breeders. The best chicks from the spring hatch would be kept for our new Pullet Flock and the Older Birds would all be together merged into one flock. There will be some noticeable aggression, Breed Dependent, but once the pecking order is established...all should be fine with minimal issues. With what you've described, Yes they can be merged. I would keep the younger birds separate from the older birds until the little ones are well feathered, then merge them. Combine them at night and when they all come out the next day...iffy, but should be OK. If you have aggressive breeds, like Ameraucanas, in the flock then you will have issues. Ameraucanas will be aggressive to new birds, unless its a breed just as aggressive.
